I am guessing you have a blog or website and you are struggling to get any website traffic and are wanting to get some help with how to get website traffic for free, Right?
Traffic is so important to a website owner, but if you are not employing the right techniques you will not be getting much traffic and find it extremely hard to put your products or content in front of the right audience.
Creating an Affiliate Marketing website does not have to be difficult, even if you have no idea how to even get started with creating a website. I know how you might be feeling, if you have never created a website, let alone an affiliate marketing website before, it can seem very intimidating.
There are so many questions you are probably asking yourself right now. Do you pay for someone to build a website for you? What about those “drag and drop” website builders like Wix or Weebly? Will you need to learn computer coding? Is WordPress the answer for building your website with? What is the best option for you?
Thoseare probably just a few of the questions you are asking yourself…
Well, first off – let’s just relax a little and take a few deep breaths. I am going to make it as simple as I can for you. We will walk through this together and go through it one step at a time.
If you follow the steps listed below in this guide, you will be able to create your own affiliate marketing website and it will be a lot easier than you might think…
Why Should you Take Our Advice…?
Hey, we are John & Gem! We have been benefitting from affiliate marketing for a while now and our business keeps on growing because of affiliate marketing and what we have learned along the way. You can read a little more about us here.
Whilst we are in a position now that we are benefitting from affiliate marketing, a few years ago we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. We had absolutely no idea as to how to build a website, or even what the heck affiliate marketing was…
When we look back, we realise that the worries we had were nothing compared to the great experiences we have had along the way too.
Some people never get started because they believe building a website is totally out of their technical range. But it isn’t!
Seriously, anyone can get started with the right help and support. That is why we are creating this guide to help anyone, and everyone get started with their own website and Affiliate Marketing.
What You Need to Know Before We Get Started
Before we can get started with the building of an affiliate marketing website, you need to have a solid understanding of how affiliate marketing works.
You need to have an understanding of the affiliate marketing business model and you will also need to know how long it can really take for you to make money from affiliate marketing. If you can get your head around these key points, you will be in a much better place to succeed with affiliate marketing.
How Much Will This Cost?
I know you might not be ready to spend any money at this point, and I totally get that. However, this guide is about getting you started the right way. There are many free websites out there, but if you are serious about being successful with affiliate marketing you are going to need to invest a little. If you are not ready to invest yet, then affiliate marketing is not for you.
There are definitely reasons to avoid free affiliate marketing websites and we want you to be successful. In this guide we will show you how you can get started with a website that will cost you $3.95/month.
We will also share with you a full in-depth training course that will help you start and grow a successful affiliate marketing business.
How to Choose a Niche for Affiliate Marketing
Before you get to the point of building a website, you need to think about the topic you want your website to be about.
What are you going to base your website on and write about, until you are ready to make this decision, there is little point in you building a website yet.
So, what topic are you going to cover…? What products or services are you going to promote on that website?
Alternatively, you can check out this great video I found below which explains how to find a good affiliate marketing niche:
If you still need help deciding on your niche, check out this article I wrote about finding a niche that might help you out.
Choosing the right affiliate marketing niche can be overwhelming, so if you still feel like that don’t worry. It is perfectly normal to be feeling like that.
Think about these key points:
There need to be products and services for you to promote – no point otherwise
You are going to be creating a lot of content on that topic – so pick something you will not tire of easily
Take your time and think about it
Once you have chosen your niche, you are ready to start building your website with that niche you have chosen. Now we are ready to go and build your affiliate marketing website.
How to Create an Affiliate Marketing Website
This guide will show you how to create an affiliate marketing website using WordPress. If you are not familiar with WordPress, know that it is the World’s largest website builder, is free and easy to use. It is known as a CMS or Content Management System.
There are two key elements to a website, and you will usually need to purchase these two services, but they are usually bundled together.
Domain Name: the domain name is simply the name or URL that you want to use for your website. If you want an example, the URL or domain name for the website you are currently on is BestAffiliateMarketingTools.org. You will see it in the address bar above you. In order to get a domain name, you need to register your domain with a “domain registrar”. Don’t feel nervous, it is actually really easy to do this.
Web Hosting: Think of the domain name as a house, the web hosting is the land the house sits on. You need a web host for your website to be visible for people to find it. Again, don’t feel nervous about this step it is again really easy to do.
These two services are fundamental requirements to be successful with an affiliate marketing website. There are plenty of free options out there, but there are flaws to these sites that could affect the success of your affiliate marketing business.
We will be setting up both your domain name and your web hosting with the same service and both of these services are included for $3.95 a month, using this discount link.
If you are willing to spend a little more that and want advanced training, you can sign up for this training here. But I will go into more detail later.
How to Choose a Domain Name
This is the stage where you need to choose a great domain name for your website. It can sometimes be hard to do, but as long as it is relevant to your niche that is a great start.
At this point, we are going to assume you have already picked a niche for your affiliate marketing website. This way you should already know what your website is going to be about.
So now we are going to find a domain name to use that is available. You may come across some that are already taken, but great domain names are still available for you to use.
To search for available domain names, you use the tool below. Once you have found an available domain name, make sure you write it down, but don’t register it yet. We will do that shortly.
How to Choose a Good Web Hosting Service
For a start, know that there are literally thousands of web hosting services around the world and they are not all equal. The competition has created a lot that are not worth your time, but it has also meant the good ones have come massively down in price.
Web hosting is cheaper than ever, and the quality of the good ones has also improved massively too.
The things to look for when picking a web hosting service:
Ease of Use
Good Customer Service
Simple WordPress Installation
Price
When you are just starting out with affiliate marketing, you do not need some “all singing, all dancing” web hosting. You just need something that is basic and doesn’t cost much until you start making some money. Then you can start upgrading if needed.
This guide is going to focus on registering your domain name, setting up your web hosting and installing WordPress all with the same service.
That service is Bluehost, a well-known and established web hosting company. You will also receive a discounted price of $3.95 a month with this Bluehost discount link and this includes everything you need.
Let’s get started with setting up your affiliate marketing website!
The first step is to us this discount link for BlueHost.com, the you can click the “Get Started Now” button.
Choose Your Hosting Plan
It then takes you to where you will choose your web hosting plan to sign up with. But at this point, I recommend you stick with the basic plan.
If this is your first affiliate marketing website, the basic plan will give you everything that you will need at this point. You can always upgrade later on.
However, it is up to you. If you want to go for a higher plan, feel free to go for it.
Choose You Domain Name
Hopefully you now have a great domain name to use and you can enter it once you have selected your web hosting plan.
If you haven’t quite come up with a name at this point, you can still carry on with a free domain for now.
Fill in Your Account Details
This is just where you will need to enter your personal details.
Review Your Package Details & Payment Information
Double check all of your details are correct and add your payment method.
Check Your Email & Set Your Password
Once you have finalised your details and your account are set up, you will receive a welcome email that looks like the image below. Go and click the green button to create your password.
You should then see a screen like this, where you can set your password. Make sure you do not lose it!
Log into your Bluehost Dashboard
We are just a few steps away from your having your very own affiliate marketing website up and running. You web hosting is now all set up. You now just need to get your head around the bluehost dashboard.
Now to Install WordPress
Bluehost have not made it difficult to install WordPress. There are hundreds of free WordPress templates for you to use. These are pre-built websites that you can choose and then customise to make it your own.
You just need to pick a design you like. Don’t worry if it isn’t exactly right, you can always change it later.
Once you have chosen your design, it takes one click to install it!
Business or Personal Use…?
If you are building this website to start affiliate marketing, then you will choose the business option.
Get to Know Your WordPress Dashboard
Once you are actually into your WordPress dashboard, play around with it and get to know what all of the different options are for. Don’t worry if you don’t really know what you are doing with it yet, just click launch and let’s get that website out into the open.
Choose Your Website Title & Website Description
Choose a website title and website description next, this is what will show up when your website appears in the search engine results. Make sure it is an accurate description of your website.
Congratulations your affiliate marketing website is up and running and read for you to get started!! It wasn’t that difficult really, was it?
You will run into loads of questions along the way, like learning how to navigate WordPress but look at how far you have come so far.
Learn How to Create Your First Page in WordPress!
Lets get into a few of the basics, the important aspect of your WordPress dashboard will be pages and posts.
Pages are normally for your homepage, about me page, privacy policy and your affiliate disclaimer.
Posts are used for your general blog posts. These are where you are writing about the products and services you are planning on promoting.
A great starting point is creating your About Me page. Check out this tutorial video on how to create your first page in WordPress.
Learn How to Create You First Post in WordPress!
So, like we said Posts are different from the pages and most of the content you create will be a post. For example, this is a post that you are reading now.
Anything you want on your blog feed should be a post. Check out this great tutorial on creating a blog post:
Grow Your Affiliate Marketing Website
The simple technique to grow your website and gain traffic is by creating high-quality content on a regular basis.
But there is a key element to any content you create. You need to help the reader and not sell to the reader.
It is a fundamental reason why affiliate marketers fail. They focus so much on selling to people, but these people are looking for help to understand why that product is the one to the buy. Why that product is better than the other alternatives on the market.
If they were already in the buying mood, they would have probably already bought it.
But they aren’t, they are looking for help to fully understand what the best option is before going and buying something.
If you can help them come to this decision and have a subtle link to the product, you will have a much better conversion rate than someone who is totally focused on selling something.
You Website Must Offer Value
If you are totally focused on the money, you will not see the kind of success that you are after. That is because the monetisation of an affiliate marketing website comes last.
You need to follow the CTPM model.
C – Content
T – Traffic
P – Pre-Sell
M – Monetise
If you create high-quality content, that will drive traffic to your site, and you are pre-selling (or helping them) with great information around these products and services you are recommending. The reader then feels happy to buy it.
The Customer Purchase Lifecycle
Another way to look at it is that your readers could be anywhere on the customer purchase cycle.
Readers could be in any of the following stages:
Research Phase
These people are looking for information on a particular topic. But they may not have product awareness yet. Some purchases could be spontaneous, most are just looking at this point. This is where most will check out Google for more information and hopefully land on your blog post.
The best approach to this type of customer is to get them to follow you on social media, join your mailing list or bookmark your site.
Decision Phase
This is where the readers have product awareness but are now looking at a number of different products or services and are researching which one is the best fit for them.
These decisions can be easily persuaded by reviews and personalised opinions of others.
People at this stage are looking for product reviews. Deliver a convincing review and you can encourage a decision.
The best approach at this stage is product reviews.
Purchasing/Action Stage
This is the stage where that reader is ready to make a purchase. It can be difficult to detour someone when they are ready to buy. But your goal is to have walked a reader through the three stages via your blog:
They have researched for information on your blog. They then read a product review you have written. At this point they are ready to take action and they are ready to follow your recommendations and click your affiliate link.
You Need to Think of Your Affiliate Website as a Small Business
The one thing everyone would love to hear is that there is an easy way to build an affiliate marketing website and that it will make money really soon. But no one in the world can promise that.
You will find plenty of so-called “Gurus” that claim to do that, but in all honesty, they are 99% scams.
If there was a sure-fire way of doing it, every existing affiliate marketer would be doing it and they are not.
Having said that, it is not impossible to build up your website and it to be successful. But the important thing to know is that it is going to take time and effort to achieve it.
It isn’t easy as in the fact you are going to have to work hard to achieve your success. Once those recurring payments start coming through, all that hard work will have paid off.
You can achieve the success and the lifestyle you want if you are willing to put the time and effort in to achieving it with affiliate marketing.
How to Find Products & Services to Promote
Once you have a decent flow of traffic, you are going to want to monetise your website, right?
So, how do you find products and services to promote in your niche and on your website?
Well, just about every industry has affiliate programs that you can use by promoting other peoples products and services.
Check out this fantastic video by Pat Flynn. It breaks down how to choose the best products and services to promote on your blog or website:
Still Feel Overwhelmed…?
Do you feel like there is more to affiliate marketing than you initially thought…? You may be feeling a little overwhelmed at this point. Now that it is totally normal.
There is a lot to get your head around when it comes to affiliate marketing.
For those who may be wanting some more guidance and help, we have a top recommended program for you to check out.
This platform will walk you through everything. Not just how to build an affiliate marketing website, but to truly grow that business to the point where it is profitable.
Check Out the Training Available at Wealthy Affiliate
A few years ago, I didn’t even know what affiliate marketing was or how to build a website. In fact, I had just been caught out by a scam and was really wary of signing up for anything online. But when you are struggling to pay the bills you carry on looking.
I noticed a blog post about affiliate marketing and wanted to know more. It led me to a review of Wealthy Affiliate, and it felt totally right. So, I signed up!
I don’t regret it in the slightest. We now have a couple of websites that are helping people online and regardless of your technical skills or concerns about your technical skills, the training is pitched in such a great way you will soon find you have mastered stuff you don’t even realise you need to be successful.
Wealthy Affiliate offers step-by-step training for someone wanting an easy to follow guide to building an affiliate business. It comes with some amazing support from a community that cares.
From being able to register a domain name and superb web hosting to provide research tools and other tools to develop your affiliate marketing website. There is not much elsewhere you would need outside of Wealthy Affiliate to become successful.
There are hundreds of training modules and training videos that you will be able to access and learn from. These include weekly live webinars that you can also benefit from.
Wealthy Affiliate has literally changed our lives and to say that I would recommend them over any other product is an understatement.
I recommend their course because it works and there are plenty of success stories that show how good following their training will work for people
If you are truly looking for the right training and support, sign up for a FREE account with Wealthy Affiliate. As long as you follow the training, commit to giving the time needed to grow your business you will be able to quit your day job.
Get Set up for Long-Term Success
I need to ask that this point as to whether you are just “testing the water” or are you actually serious about building an affiliate marketing business. If you are serious about it, you need to go for the long-term strategy.
Do not keep chasing the get-rich-quick route.
You will find yourself in a year’s time no closer to your goals, when you could have built an amazing affiliate marketing business following the training at Wealthy Affiliate.
I have learned so much from going through the training at Wealthy Affiliate and my business has benefited massively through it. You will be surprised at what you will learn and be able to do in such a short period of time setting up your business for long-term success.
Things like keyword research and search engine optimisation and creating amazing content that converts, etc. There is a lot you can learn!
Something to Think About…
I do hope you have found our guide on how to start an affiliate marketing website for beginners has been helpful.
You must now at this point realise that running a profitable affiliate marketing business needs much more than just a website. You need to work at it, grow it and nurture your business over an extended period of time.
But for those of you who can commit, the affiliate marketing lifestyle is an amazing one.
If you feel it is time, then what are you waiting for? It may still seem overwhelming, but it will not feel any different until you get started. But if you have support, like that at Wealthy Affiliate you will soon lose all of your worries and it will be replaced with a belief that this will work for you.
I know you can do it; you just need to start.
Thanks for checking out our guide, we hope you found it useful. We would love to hear what you think, let us know in the comments below.
Affiliate Marketing, combined with Online Marketing is definitely something that you will want to learn and put into practise because it is a great way of achieving financial freedom.
Affiliate Marketing is a really appealing route to making money online, but know that you will need to invest some time into learning everything you need to know before working towards achieving your goals of giving up your day job and enjoying truly passive income.
Can the 30 Day Success Club really make you money or is the 30 Day Success Club a scam? We answer all of your questions in our review and whether it is worthwhile for you to invest your money in.
First off, good job on doing your research that is a great way of avoiding low-quality products or scams.
Product Review Summary
Product Name: 30 Day Success Club
Owner: Not Disclosed
Product Type: Affiliate Marketing Platform
Price: $37 One-Off Fee + Upsells
Best For: No One
Summary: The 30 Day Success Club is an affiliate marketing platform that provides ready-made websites to host your affiliate products with. But there are some things about the program that raise serious concerns about the legitimacy of the 30 Day Success Club. The owners hide behind the product and do not give you any indication into who they are. The use of fake testimonials to ensure you don’t really know what you are signing up for.
The platform is also full of outdated traffic strategies that turn out to not be sustainable in the long run. In my opinion, this program will not benefit anyone!
The 30 day success club has bold claims about being able to help people to make money online. The initial premise is legit as it uses the same model that we use to make money and that is affiliate marketing.
The Sales video states that you will be able to make a 4-digit income each month following their model.
But like a lot of other products available out there, they are not forthcoming with how affiliate marketing really works or how the websites they provide will work either.
The target audience for the 30 day success club is those who do not know anything about affiliate marketing, but their initial sales video has the usual hype associated with scams or low-quality products.
The sales video is just them talking about a system that could help you earn a 4-digit income a month without putting any effort in… It also lacks telling you how you will be earning that money with so little input. They are just hoping that you get sucked in by the (false) promise of you earning thousands of dollars in an easy way.
This doesn’t surprise me, because they don’t want you to know how it all works until you have spent your money.
How Does 30 Day Success Club Work?
If you decide to check the 30 day success club out, you pay your fee and then you get access to the members area. This has a site builder for you to create your own website.
So far so good, you then choose from the selection for some products to add to your website. Again, no problem.
Now those are the basic premises of affiliate marketing, but their claims that you will get that all-important traffic to actually buy from your site straightaway is where the system is flawed.
The 30-day Success Club is offered through the ClickBank Affiliate Network and they have a number of products that you could use to promote on your website, although I would state that you need to be careful what you choose to promote as there are quite a few products that are not worthwhile and could harm your credibility.
But the 30 Day Success Club Strategy Will Not Work These Days
If we were to go back in time and just create a website and included some worthwhile products on it, we would get instant traffic. That is what this program is stating is still the way it works.
But back then, only those who knew html and coding would have had a website. These days anyone can create a website. It takes less than a minute and can be about anything.
To make money online you require traffic. You need an audience to reach your website.
That is easier said than done.
Without an effective strategy you will have no chance of getting traffic, let alone making any money.
This Strategy is Missing from the 30 Day Success Club
Their strategy is all around just sharing your website wherever you can – social media, forums, etc. But you need to really target your content to a relevant audience if you are going to make sales.
Their route to free marketing lacks anything on SEO. They do not teach you search engine optimisation. Without it, you have little chance of appearing in the search engines.
Who Will Benefit from the 30 Day Success Club?
Honestly, I cannot see how anyone other than the owners would benefit from this platform. You would walk away with a website offering products but lack any real knowledge on how to get your content in front of the ideal audience who would actually be interested in the products you have chosen.
It would be like opening up a coffee shop in a village where no one likes coffee. Poor example, but hopefully gets the point across.
How Much Does 30 Day Success Club Cost?
Whilst their sales video and landing page are saying, it is not free to build a website with the 30 Day Success Club. There is the upfront cost of $37, this cost covers the website.
But there are also the upsells to consider.
Email Compatibility – $37
This allows you to integrate email autoresponders to your website. Email marketing is still a really effective marketing strategy, yet you have to pay extra to add it to your website.
3 More Sites – $47
This option allows you to build more websites. They are stating so you can make more money, but the first one wouldn’t make money so why would the additional 3?
Heatmaps – $47
This is a form of analytics on your website to understand traffic. But Google Analytics is far better and is free.
What is Good About 30 Day Success Club (PROS)
Here is what we liked about it:
Normally I would try and at least have one thing to consider with a product, but there is nothing I can say to put this product in a positive light.
What Could 30 Day Success Club Improve on? (CONS)
Here is what we didn’t like:
Out of Date Traffic Strategies
To make money online you need to have traffic. This can be achieved for free and doesn’t require any fancy programs. It just requires hard work, some keyword research and high-quality content.
But the 30 Day Success Club is not offering you any value towards getting any traffic. Their strategies are out-dated and will not work these days.
Google and other search engines are really cracking down on these out-of-date techniques and rewarding those who are following the right strategies with higher rankings.
The fact they miss out SEO, which is the best form of getting free traffic is a travesty.
When the product is low-quality, they will not ever get real testimonials. This is where they decide to pay for an actor to write a testimonial.
You will know straight away as they are normally reading from a script. There are places like Fiverr where you can pay for people to record promo videos for you.
Don’t believe me, then check this out:
By using Fiverr to pay for fake endorsements, you get a feeling for the fact that the owners have no interest in whether you can make money with the program or not.
Done-For-You Systems Lack Any Stability!
The problem with having your website with a program like this is the fact that your website will remain on their server.
AS this product doesn’t really have legs on it, what happens to your website when this system goes offline… You will lose your website and your money too.
You will also lack any real control over personalising your website.
You Will Have Unrealistic Expectations
The biggest problem I have with platforms like this is the fact that they prey on people who are looking to make money quickly.
Affiliate Marketing is an awesome way of making money, but it is not a quick thing. It will not make you rich quickly. It is a business model where you work your backside off until you do start making money.
Platforms like this state you only need to spend a couple of minutes a day on your website and it will make you money. No chance.
Maybe ten years ago we could have done that, now you need to understand that the competition is immense and that you will need to stand out to get to the top of the search engines.
But these days, you need to create high quality content. You need to help people with their purchasing decisions, and this is a big difference compared to just selling stuff.
How can you achieve all this with only a few minutes a day?
They offer you screenshots of their earnings. Typically, the owners will have been doing affiliate marketing for years and know what they really need to do and those earnings are because they are experts.
But what they do not want to do is offer that advice to you. They just want to make themselves even more money at your expense.
My Honest Opinion of 30 Day Success Club? Is the 30 Day Success Club a Scam?
The 30 Day Success Club has all the hallmarks of a scam, I would say it probably isn’t a scam. But it is still a platform that I would highly suggest no one invest in.
You will look back and realise you have wasted your money and your time, when you could have actually get started for free with the proper route to affiliate marketing with expert training.
There is no real information around the owner of the platform, they are using fake testimonials and selling outdated traffic strategies to people who will know no different.
That is just hurting people who are wanting to get started and the fact is the owners do not care in the slightest.
They do not offer you anything of value within their platform. You require a better route to real earning potential online and we can help you there with our top recommended training platform for affiliate marketers.
Sick of Seeing Scams & Want a Real Opportunity to Make Money Online?
If you are anything like me, you are sick of seeing low-quality products or products that turn out to be scams and are still looking for a real opportunity to make money online.
Affiliate Marketing is a real opportunity to make that money online, but there are a few things that you will need to consider before getting started with affiliate marketing.
First one is the fact that it is not a get-rich-quick scheme. With all of these products that claims you can make money online straightaway or with little effort. It can be easy to think that it is possible.
The Second one is the amount of time and effort that is required to make it work.
There are ways of achieving it within a reasonable timescale, but that timescale is weeks and months and not hours or minutes.
If you are still with me and are really interested in finding a way to build your own financial freedom with an online business then I can highly recommend a training platform that provides you with all the information and tools required to get started and see it through to where you have your own profitable online business.
We started out with this training platform and have never looked back. We are now seeing sales online and want to be able to help you make money online.
Our top Recommended Platform for Beginners is Wealthy Affiliate. They offer step-by-step training, the ability to build websites and with expert help and support you will start your own affiliate marketing business.
If you want to learn more about what is available to you with a Wealthy Affiliate membership, then check out our useful guide here.
If you have any questions around the 30 Day Success Club or anything to do with Affiliate Marketing write them in the comments below and we will definitely get back to you as soon as we can.
Affiliate Marketing is an awesome way of making money online promoting stuff you love and can allow you to really get involved in your chosen interest. Some will tell you affiliate marketing is dead and will not go on that long. Trust me, it is only growing as more and more merchants get on the affiliate marketing train.
Don’t get me wrong, it is highly competitive as more people do get started with it, but as long as you get the right training you can still benefit massively from affiliate marketing.
Facebook is a one of those platforms. Pretty much everyone is on there and this can lead you being able to promote your affiliate links via Facebook to a huge audience.
Facebook already allows you to connect with like-minded people in the subject you want to choose for your affiliate marketing campaigns and combining the two is a way for you to hopefully make money. Let’s get into how to start affiliate marketing with Facebook.
How does the Wealthy Affiliate really work? We absolutely love what Wealthy Affiliate has to offer its members. From the beginner friendly training to the awesome website engagement tools you will find amazing support every step of the way.
Affiliate Marketing is a great way to earn money from home and many people are exploring that option, but they often come across poor imitations of affiliate marketing training when really, they can do no better than what is on offer at Wealthy Affiliate.
Wealthy Affiliate offers the best training that any beginner could want, and the reason you will typically only find positive words said about it is because of the successes that their members achieve.
We have been with Wealthy Affiliate for a couple of years now and are seeing our own successes with our online businesses, and we want to help others who want to get started online too.
If you really want to know what is inside Wealthy Affiliate, what is offers you and ultimately does it really work then read on.
Many people have the wrong concept about passive income. They believe it means they can lie on the beach all day, without having anything to worry about. When in reality, the real point of passive income is to free up your time to do some more fulfilling and enjoyable ventures.
Plot your escape from the boring day job and find true financial freedom. We have come up with 20 ways of generating passive income.
Amazon is the largest marketplace in the world, so it is only natural that people start asking how to become an affiliate marketer for Amazon. We have racked our brains and have come up with 5 easy steps to getting started and want to share those with you… We will also through in 5 tips to making sure you are successful including some great training and tools that we have used to build up our affiliate marketing business and you can learn how to get started too.
If you have been looking into how to start a blog and make money, then you have come to the right place.
A few of the common factors that stop people starting a blog is they think they lack the technical skills and knowledge to be able to – I want to stop you right there and say anyone can start a blog these days. Even if you only have basic computer skills, that will not stop you. If you have the right training and support, anything is possible.
I want to you shed any thoughts like that, YOU can become a blogger that makes money even if you have no idea of how to get started. That is where I want to help you out. I will show you how simple it is to get started with a blog, and the important steps you need to take to make it profitable too.
Affiliate Disclaimer: Please Note, this post may contain affiliate links. This will only be from products we recommend, please read my disclaimer for more info.
What is a Blog?
If you search online for what exactly a blog is, it will come back with results about it being a website that gets regularly updated and is written in an informal style. But in essence, the key to a great blog is engaging with your audience. The way to do that is to start a blog on a subject that you are already familiar with or by picking a passion you have.
But if you want a prime example of a blog website, then you are already on one. Gem and I started this blog website to help others find their own way to making money online via a blog website and affiliate marketing.
The best thing about picking a subject you already have an interest in or are passionate about it is, you will not find it difficult to create new content as you help others and engage with others who are also interested in the same interest as you.
How to Start a Blog?
Before you can make money from a blog, the first steps you need to take are about starting that blog. We just talked about picking a subject you are already interested in. I want to dig a little deeper into that, for a very good reason.
But first, the thing you need to consider when starting a blog is being realistic about the timescales required to get it to the point where it is making money.
Blogging is a great way of earning money online, but if you think this will happen in a couple of weeks or even months, then I hate to disappoint you but that is being totally realistic.
SO, why does picking a subject that you are already interested in help?
It is a massively important decision when choosing the topic of your website, because you are going to have to work hard and engage into that blog every day, whether you choose a travel blog, a make money online blog, a blog on parenting, etc.
You are going to have to write consistently to get it noticed, because without traffic your blog will not make any money.
To get that traffic, you need to create a lot of content and prove to the search engines your blog deserves to be at the top of the search results.
But imagine if you picked a subject that you had little knowledge or interest in, but you chose it because someone said it was profitable. Do you honestly think you can stay motivated writing articles about a subject you have no interest in, when you are in the early stages where a blog isn’t making money?
Another factor to consider is, your audience will also realise you lack the knowledge or interest in a subject really easily through your writing, and this will lead to them not staying on your website for you to make money.
Now, turn that completely around…
If you chose a subject you absolutely loved, already have some knowledge in and would love to learn more around that subject.
Whatever that subject, I would find that come out in your writing. I would feel like you are a real authority in that area and trust your opinions enough to give you the opportunity to make money.
That is the opportunity I present to you around starting your own blog. You need to become an authority in whatever niche you choose.
Become an Authority with a Niche Website.
There is a little more to it than just picking a subject, the main reason is if you start too broad in a subject, you will find it extremely hard to break into it.
But if you narrow that search down to as narrow as you can and start in a smaller market of it you will find it much easier to break into the market and get that all-important traffic to your blog.
Let’s use an example, to break this down. If we took the subject photography, there are so many different types of photography:
Portrait Photography, Landscape Photography, Wedding Photography, Travel Photography, etc.
Just picking the loose subject Photography would make it extremely hard to become an authority
We would be up against all websites that are associated with photography and we would be lost in the ocean without a chance of ever getting to land.
What if we used just a smaller section of the photography market, and focused more on wedding photography?
We have narrowed this down, but I ask you “do you think we have narrowed it down enough?”
Think of the term, it is still too broad.
Are we offering wedding photography services or teaching people how to capture wedding photography?
Now, if we narrowed it down to a blog that was targeting the audience that are looking to “learn how to capture wedding photography” that is a better starting point.
Whatever the subject you love and want to start a blog in, the more you can narrow down the target audience, the better the chance you have of being successful and turning a profit.
Another example, which seems quite popular is travel blogging. That term is quite broad again, narrow it down as far as you can. It could be “essential tips for a travel blogger”.
Picking a niche is the first important step to starting a blog, if you think you are ready to get started with your own niche (authority) website you can create a free blog website in the box below. Check if your chosen website name is free now!
Once you have a blog up and running, you need to work on getting an audience. Only then will you have the opportunity to make money from it.
Why Your Blog Needs an Audience to Make Money?
Having your own blog website is a fantastic thing and is a great way of connecting with others in your niche. But before you can start thinking about making money from your website blog, it needs to have an audience with which to engage with and show offers to make money.
We will get into the detail about how to make money from your blog later on in the article but imagine if you had a travel blog and were advertising a holiday comparison website on your blog. If no one sees that ad, you have no chance of making any money. That is why you need an audience; you need plenty of traffic coming to your blog before having an chance of earning a living from that blog.
So, how do you get that all important traffic??
How to Get That All Important Traffic to Your Blog!
IF you start searching for how to get traffic to your blog, you will be inundated with all kinds of systems that generate free traffic for you, some of which are scams or low quality traffic systems that require you to pay and all you get is bots visiting your website. But bots will not earn you money.
No, the best strategy for your blog to get traffic is – Creating High Quality Content that Helps Others!
Think about why you searched for the term “How to Start a Blog and Make Money for Beginners?” You were looking for help with that.
If you find this article useful, then I have achieved what I set out to do. Helping people start a blog and make money!
With every article you write on your blog, you want to be helping answer a question or solve a problem and that is by the far the best strategy to get free traffic through the search engines.
Google is constantly looking for content that helps people with their questions, if you answer a question (without selling) and it is an engaging article, that is how you rank at the top of the search engines where the traffic starts to seriously flow.
The best spot to be to get a lot of traffic is at the top of the search results for Google. If you can get there, that is where you are an authority in your niche and can really turn helping people into a money-making opportunity.
Start Making Money with Your Blog
Let’s just cover off what we have been going through so far:
Pick a Niche – choose a niche that you are already interested in and can thoroughly get onboard with writing regular content in.
Create a Blog Website – This will become the foundation for your online blog and will allow you to become a true authority in your chosen niche and expand into engaging your audience on social media, etc.
Help People with Awesome Content – Create High-Quality Content that helps people. Answer Questions, Write How-to Guides, Write Product Reviews and generally engaging content in and around your niche.
Doing all of this will attract traffic to your blog and leads us nicely into two great and easy ways to start making money from you blog.
Our Personal Favourite – Affiliate Marketing
One of the best ways for a blogger to make money from their blog is via Affiliate Marketing. It might seem like a weird term, but it is a really simple way of making money by recommending products and earning a commission if someone goes and buys it.
Let’s go back to our travel blog example to show how it works:
You have a travel blog, and you are writing an article on the “best travel pillows for when flying abroad”. You write a detailed and informed article on the best travel pillows. As an affiliate partner of Amazon, you could include some links within your articles for your readers to go and buy these pillows (via Amazon) from your blog.
You readers decide to follow your recommendation on the best travel pillow and follow your (affiliate) link and go and buy it from Amazon. Guess what, you have just earned a commission from one of your readers going and buying that product. You have helped them with their purchase, and you are rewarded with a percentage of the sale price.
That is how simple Affiliate Marketing works.
Whilst the premise of affiliate marketing is simple, it does take hard work as this will not be possible without an audience coming to your website.
But is by far the most popular way for people making money online, because it allows people to explore something that they are really interested in and there is an affiliate program out there too.
The key is to help people and not sell to people. If people were ready to buy, they would just go straight to Amazon. They come to a blog because they want to check out the products before buying it.
Instore it is easy to go up and touch the product and have a look. Online, they need to check reviews and that is the power of the right product review on a blogger’s website.
Once you have that traffic to your blog, you can then start utilising some of the space you have on your website. Whilst adverts on a website are not everyone’s cup of tea, they are a way of monetising your website.
Google AdSense is a great starting place for bloggers as they do not impose that many restrictions on your joining. But know that you will require some traffic to be able to apply for their program. You will also need to have a lot of visitors to make this a lucrative way of earning money – Affiliate Marketing is much better route.
But when you start to get some serious traffic, you can then explore other ad networks, such as MediaVine who do pay top money for ads. But you need at least 25k sessions a month to be able to benefit from them.
My advice would be to start a blog, utilise affiliate marketing and add the ad networks when you are starting to get traffic.
If you seriously want to start a blog and make money from it, then I highly suggest you get some expert help and support for every step of the way:
Get Expert Help & Support Every Step of the Way!
I would not be where I am today without help and support. I will not lie to you; Blogging is hard work. It is fun, but it is hard work. There are elements of it that I have not covered in detail in this post, for example keyword research, or search engine optimisation that are all essential to get your blog up and running and find the traffic you need to be able to make money from your blogging.
It is no fun if you have a blog that nobody sees, so here is where I want to offer my help and support with a training platform that will take you through every step of the way from:
Starting your own Blog Website
Learning How to Build it
How to Make it Look just how you want it to look,
Make it Google Friendly
Getting Traffic
Ultimately Monetising it
There is no need to do this on your own, if you really want to find success with blogging you will find no better training platform than Wealthy Affiliate. Their free starter membership includes 2 free websites, 10 free lessons on how to start your blog and how you will make money with it, how to pick the right niche for you and many other exciting factors to starting a blog.
You will also gain direct access to myself as an affiliate guide, here is a link to my profile page on WA. You will also gain access to a community of over 1 million other bloggers.
Some who are already making money, some who are just like you and getting started. Either way, you will be amazed at what you can learn and where your website could be in a year’s time.
Do not be worried about what you know and what you do not know, Kyle (WA Co-Owner) has created an amazing training course that will take you through every step of the way to creating your website.
Before I had joined, I didn’t have a clue about building a website, or even what affiliate marketing was. I didn’t even think my writing was any good, but that improves with time and the right training.
I must stress, blogging is not for everyone. I am not trying to put you off, but many bloggers fail in their goals of making money and do you want to know the main reason why.
Why Bloggers Often Fail – They Give Up too Soon!
That’s right, their expectations of how quickly affiliate marketing or ads on a blog can make them money. This website is only 6 months old, I started it to help people get started the right way, but I have only just started to get genuine traffic to it and that is a realistic timescale to expect in a competitive niche like this one.
What I am trying to say is, the best advice I can give for when you decide to start a blog is work hard, stay focused and set yourself non-financial goals to start with. My initial goals were all about being able spend more time with my family. That kept me driven, even though my first website was not making any money. But if I had given up in month 5, I would not have seen affiliate marketing work in month 6.
Why Do You Want to Start a Blog?
I know it is to make money, but I think that our perception of making money online has been offset by all of the products out there that promise you can earn thousands of dollars overnight.
I have yet to find a genuine one that can do it, but until you fully delve into the online world you cannot always appreciate all of the scams out there and the fact is, you cannot make quick money online.
If you are in the binary options trading world, you may be able to but that is a gamble if you haven’t got a clue, like me.
If I had been only thinking about the money, I would have given up a long time ago. Give yourself a secondary motivation and my advice is “You want to help people in my niche”.
I started this blog to help people avoid the scams out there and find the right ways to make money online for them.
I love helping people, I may make money if people follow my recommendations and that is the basics of affiliate marketing. But I am helping people, whether they do it or not.
I also keep in my mind that if I achieve my goals, I will have more time to spend with my son growing up and helping more people too.
Don’t lose the fact you want to earn money, but the importance of other goals is just as important.
And when that first dollar sale comes through, you will get excited, we all do.
Just remember, if you can earn a dollar, you can earn $1000.
Start a Blog, Get the Right Training & Support Here
If you are still with me and are serious about starting a blog with the goals of working from home and earning money from it, you will find no better platform than Wealthy Affiliate. They have helped thousands of people achieve those exact goals, but you need to commit to the following to be successful:
Work Hard – Spend time learning and putting into practice everything you have learned
Stay Consistent – Set daily, weekly and monthly goals and achieve them
Ask Loads of Questions – Whether that be direct to me, or to the WA community. No question is a silly question, because it is about clarifying your understanding.
Do Not Give Up – This is the most important one, there will be times when you think it isn‘t working. That is the point where you contact me and ask me for some advice, or just a chat to ensure you stay motivated and can see it through.
The biggest one is to NOT GIVE UP, if you ever feel like your blog isn’t right or you are stuck with what to write about, or anything at all. That is when you message me within Wealthy Affiliate and go “John, I need help!”
That is what you sometimes have to do and guess what – I will be there to help you out!
If you can learn and implement everything you can and stay focused, you will find that within a week you will have built your own website that is ready for the search engines and has already got content on it.
If you can achieve all that within a week, where do you think you could be in 6 months’ time?
Wealthy Affiliate is a great platform with training, tools and support all on offer, if you would like to learn a little more here is a link to my detailed review. (My Wealthy Affiliate Review)
If you feel you are ready to get started with your very own blog website and can commit to building an online business for your future, then why not sign up for a free starter membership with Wealthy Affiliate.
Unlike others, you are not required to enter credit card details or pay anything, the starter membership is to give you a full insight into what Wealthy Affiliate has to offer.
If you still have any questions about monetising your blog or getting started, or Wealthy Affiliate itself please write them in the comments below and I will get back to your as soon as we can.
Have you been searching for ways to earn money working from home? I bet you have found loads that are actually just jobs or ‘Get Rich Quick’ schemes that all turn out to be scams and you might be getting frustrated and getting to the point where you think it isn’t possible to earn any money working from home.
But I want to assure you there are genuine opportunities for you to earn money and it can actually be quite fun too.
The reason I say it can be fun is the fact that I will be showing you how you can start your own online business in a subject that you enjoy, with none of your own products. Regardless of your experience or computer knowledge, you can start your own online business with Affiliate Marketing.
There are other ways to earn money working from home, but there are advantages to someone with little knowledge online to starting an affiliate marketing. It can also mean you get to choose what you actually start your online business in. Affiliate marketing is easy to get started, requires little money to get started and there is some awesome support and training on offer.
In this post, I will describe in detail what Affiliate Marketing is, how you can choose any niche (interest) you have and turn it into a profitable online business with Affiliate Marketing with awesome training and support too.
All you need to ensure it is successful is promise me two things:
Be prepared to invest a lot of time into your business and start thinking like an entrepreneur otherwise it often will end up in failure.
Why Most Fail at Affiliate Marketing?
The reason I say this is this is not a quick thing, you will not make money overnight or even within a couple of weeks with affiliate marketing. There are people out there that are earning 6-figures out of an affiliate marketing business, but they all started in the same place – putting in a lot of time and effort and not getting anything in return straightaway.
So, if you are looking for a quicker way to earning money, then this is not it.
But I would like to add that most products out there that claim to earn you quick money are scams, or you need a lot of money to invest in paid ads to make it work.
I presume, if you are here you are looking for a genuine opportunity to learn and earn online – Affiliate Marketing can offer that, but again know you will need to put the time and effort in and be realistic with the timescales. I didn’t make anything for 6 months, if I had given up at month 5 – I would have said Affiliate Marketing didn’t work, when it was actually my expectations that were wrong.
So, if you are ready to invest in your future and earn the goals you have set, with realistic goals we can carry on with what exactly is affiliate marketing?
What Exactly is Affiliate Marketing?
The premise behind affiliate marketing is actually quite simple, it is the timescales that is the often reason why people are put off.
Affiliate Marketing is where you (an affiliate) promote a product or service and receive a commission if someone goes and buys it.
It is a great way for companies to get their products promoted without having to spend millions of dollars in a marketing campaign. It is the model that Amazon used when it first launched as just an online book store and they still use it today. They would give their members a percentage of the price for introducing a new buyer of their books.
Now, when you think of how large Amazon is today and the different products they have on offer in their marketplace, you can start to understand the scope that affiliate marketing allows.
That is why this business model can be fun, as you can start affiliate marketing in any interest, hobby or passion you have as there will be both a customer and an affiliate program available for you to cater for.
Let me give you an example, to make it easier for us to continue. Let’s say your hobby is golf. I know not everyone will be interested in golf, but the premise will work whatever your interests or hobbies are.
When I go onto Amazon and just type golf, there are 300,000 products that are available in that category on which we could promote via an affiliate marketing business just on Amazon. That doesn’t include any other affiliate programs out there. But you notice that I will start with Amazon, as a big factor to this business working is trust. Amazon is trusted the world over, so it is a great starting place for affiliate marketers.
But when starting out with an affiliate marketing business, the biggest obstacle we need to get over is getting trusted by the search engines, this takes time but there are things we can do to help, and the first thing is when you are picking a Niche is not start too broad. The narrow you can get, the better you have of building up traffic and trust sooner.
Picking a Niche
SO, whilst Golf is the example we are using, Golf in general is way too broad. So the next stage would be to narrow that down. Let’s go back to the categories and seeing how we can narrow it down to find our niche and a target audience.
Let’s look into Golf Accessories, this opens up another set of categories in Amazon.
Now, when I think about if my Uncle is a keen golfer. He takes it very seriously and researches heavily before investing in any new item for his golf. That is something else you need to know about your target audience, ready for your new affiliate marketing business.
SO, now I have gone into Golf GPS Units on Amazon. There are 303 items in this niche. That is 303 items I can research on for creating content for a niche affiliate marketing website.
That is what you need to do. Become the Authority in Golf GPS Units. One you have become the authority in that niche, you will be making money via affiliate marketing. It will also allow you to expand in other categories within Golf in general.
At this stage, you will have great traffic coming to your website to understand Golf GPS Units and as you have them regularly coming to your website to find out about these devices – think about this, you will have an audience is very engaged in Golf too. So, at that point if you started branching out into other items in the broader golf accessory category, you can start offering help and advice in other products – such as Range Finders, Scorers, Shoe bag, etc.
That is the scale and the opportunity that a well-executed affiliate marketing business can achieve.
Will you achieve this overnight, no. Will you achieve in this a month, no. You need to plan for the long term.
Things to Consider with Affiliate Marketing
There are a few things to consider when starting out with affiliate marketing, and the most important one is that you need to help the reader and not sell to the reader.
Imagine if we started that Golf GPS Unit niche website and all we did was include 303 reviews of the 303 devices and that was all that was on the website? Then imagine if you landed on that site, and all the reviews were “buy this it is great?” “Don’t buy this one, buy this one instead”
Now imagine, that same website with helpful guides about picking the right Golf GPS Units, what to look out for, how to care for your devices, some interesting posts about golf in general and then some well-executed reviews with helpful insightful information about the devices including pros and cons about them…
Now, which website would you rather land on before making a purchasing decision?
That is the difference between helping people and not selling, you will convert a lot more when you are helping people come to a decision then selling them.
The Customer Purchase Lifecycle
Think about the last time when you searched for something online (when it was a product) were you in a position to make a purchase? Or were you just browsing.
Now, when we are in a store we are not always looking to buy. Where would that be any different online?
You will have people reach your website at different points along the customer purchase lifecycle. Some will just be researching, and some will be in a buying mood. You need to have a collection of posts, videos, etc on your website to cater for whenever they are there. That is how you build up an authority in your niche. Once you have this, you will start building up your trust. Once you have the trust, they will follow your advice more easily and that is when you start converting.
Is Affiliate Marketing Hard Work?
I will be totally honest with you, it can seem like hard work at times. But it is often because we lose sight of our goals because it hasn’t reached our targets yet. That is often because we have unrealistic timescales.
A big factor is time with any online business, the more you can put into it the more we can do to achieve our goals.
If you can put 40 hours into a business a week, you would logically say that would be more successful than someone who can only put 10 hours in right?
But there are other factors to consider, if you are new, most of those 40 hours will be spent learning how to actually do some of the basics, whilst an experienced marketer like myself could get loads done in 10 hours.
Some will only have a couple of hours a week to invest, and this will mean that their expectations and timescales should move accordingly.
I am not telling you this to put you off, I am trying to give you insight into what you can expect if you decide to choose Affiliate Marketing. I also want to tell you this, so you can also choose non-financial goals too.
If we solely focused on the money made with affiliate marketing, in the first year I would have said it was a failure and not worth doing.
But when we start to explore, the amount of skills I have learned through starting an affiliate marketing business and learning from our recommended training platform. You can start to see actually, the first year was awesome.
I learned:
How to Build Website (a service I could offer to others)
Keyword Research (Essential for online business)
Affiliate Programs (how to help others with affiliate marketing and programs)
Search Engine Optimisation (How to be Google Friendly)
Social Media Marketing
Writing Content (a service I could offer out as a freelancer)
Those are just a few that you could learn along this journey, and as a freelancer you could make money whilst your website is building up that authority you need.
The golden nugget for that is when you are number one in Google for a keyword. If you can get there, with the right converting posts you will be at a point where you can say you are making money from affiliate marketing and be able to work from home.
You just need the right training for affiliate marketing.
The Right Training and Support for Affiliate Marketing – Wealthy Affiliate
If you seriously want to be successful at affiliate marketing and reach your goal of how to earn from working from home, then you need to understand the first step is to get the right training.
First off, don’t think of it as going back to school. Think of it as an investment of time into your future business. The most successful affiliate marketers will tell you, that if you do not keep learning and adapting to the ever-changing playing field you are destined to fail.
I know affiliate marketers who have built $100k businesses and they still log in and follow the live training every week.
Some will disagree with me, but you need a website to build an affiliate marketing business. Imagine putting all your hard work into one social media channel and then that social media channel goes through problems, or your target audience isn’t engaging into that social media channel. You are stuck. Go back to the golf example, I wouldn’t search social media for Golf GPS units, I would search on Google.
Google owns 2/3 of the search traffic, that is where you need to target.
Our recommended training platform offers valuable training in affiliate marketing and it also offers WordPress web hosting all in one platform.
Wealthy Affiliate is a comprehensive training platform for affiliate marketers, regardless of your experience or your computer knowledge – in the first ten lesson, you will have built your own WordPress website in your chosen niche, you will fully understand the potential behind affiliate marketing and how to start building up your traffic to make this a reality.
All of this is included in a free starter membership, there is a premium membership but for now, the free starter membership will give you a full insight into this awesome platform that Gem, and I used to build this website and Gem’s wedding stationary business.
Whatever your niche, whatever your time allowance is – if you follow this training and invest the time you will see that it can work for you too.
I will always be honest with you, and I would recommend you read my Wealthy Affiliate review just to understand fully what is available and the successes WA has brought for many of its members.
But if you want to explore the platform for free, check out the free starter membership and go through the ten free lessons.
You will surely see that this is a platform that cares for its members, you will even get coaching from the owners Kyle & Carson and if you decide to accept my invitation you will get personal coaching from me too.
Final Word
Affiliate Marketing is a great option when you want to build an online business in something that you are actually interested in… we chose golf as an example, but that same search could be done in healthcare, gym fitness, football, computer games, making money online, cooking, toys, jewellery, cars, etc.
You name it there is a target audience within a niche, that you could build an authority website in and enjoy the rewards. Like I said, it is a slow burner. But if you could be in the position where in a year’s time you have an authority website in a niche that is earning you a good return, and you continue to scale that business think where you could be in ten years’ time?
Affiliate Marketing is constantly growing, and the opportunities are bigger than you think…
But you need to invest in learning everything Wealthy Affiliate has to offer, and actually putting into practice everything they teach you.
Otherwise, you will fall into the high percentage of people who failed at affiliate marketing and claim it doesn’t work.
You can earn money working from home, but you need to commit to it. Set yourself daily, weekly and monthly goals and, borrowing a term from an affiliate friend HUSTLE! Go and get it!
Thanks for reading my post. If you have any questions or comments about, we have talked about, then please write them in the comments below and I will definitely come back to you as soon as.
Thanks, John
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